BrumPod

This week’s episode is just a short burst of news and updates you might not have known about.

First up, Canva.

Canva announces the Canva Visual Worksuite, including Canva Docs at their annual conference. They’re not holding back when it comes to developing their platform even further. They are constantly upping their game!

Canva info: https://thedigitalgeneralist.substack.com/p/canva-ups-their-game-again

Next up; how to find out wh...

In this episode, we have a very special guest - and I say special, because our guest, Samantha Fitzgibbons, happens to be Rich’s bestie of some 17 years, and counting!

Sam has recently had her debut novel, Happy State, published, so we decided to have a chat with her about the book, and the path which led her to where she is now.

Having trained as an actress, then subsequently completing a degree in psychology, to being a professio...

At least for as long as The Apprentice has been on air, our lives have been filled with such phrases as ‘smash it!’, ‘knocking it out of the ballpark’, ‘doing it for the team’, ‘absolute home run!’, ‘MVP’ etc.

However there are some legitimate ways running a business is very much like sports psychology; so given the Commonwealth Games are well underway in Birmingham, we thought we’d take a little look into the concept.

Just like in...

With rail strikes looming and petrol prices at record highs - just how much does this kind of disruption affect modern business operations?

With more people continuing to work from home post-pandemic, and the business landscape looking like it’s probably changed for good, are there as many people likely to be as affected with these disruptions as there once were?

If even more people have flexi-working arrangements and wor...

Elon Musk is purportedly in the closing stages of buying Twitter for a cool $44Bn - there have been extremely mixed reports online as to whether people are all for it, or think it’s the worst plan ever.

Twitter has been likened to a cesspool for many years - does this mean he’s now going to come in and clean it up and make it a more positive environment? Or will it just make things worse?

Then again, as we’ve said many a time, your...

We found an article from Foundation Inc that was all about how to write better headlines from the pros at LinkedIn.

Needless to say, our interest was piqued, as getting better at anything has to be a good thing, and if it helped our combined LinkedIn activity, then that’s always good, no?

But after finding a couple of useful bits, like keeping things succinct etc, the ‘tips’ went on to be more and more….well….ludicrous - to th...

In this episode we talk about what it means to start a business in 2022, to take the leap from ‘safe’ employment into the world of the self-employed.

A topic close to our team (and hearts!), as Jason has recently done just that - stepped back from many years service as an employee in a big business, to starting his own journey into the world of self-employment.

We look at the reasons WHY people want to start their own bus...

With the meteoric rise that Canva has seen over the last few years, it was inevitable that competitors would rise to get a slice of the action.

Given how Canva has completely changed the game in the world of graphic design, democratising the way graphics (and now of course video) is created by not just graphic design professionals, but by everyone - through the use of templates and pre-made elements that people can incorporate with...

In our final episode of 2021, we just wanted to give you a few updates of things you need to know. 

As you know, we had to cancel our December networking event due to the current Omicron spread and the restrictions that are currently in place - we decided to wait until the new year instead of putting on a substandard event, so fingers crossed this is just a very temporary suspension of our events, and we look forward to w...

Well, it’s official, Christmas is fast approaching now from all angles, whether you’re ready or not! The wine is starting to flow, the nibbles are out, and people are gathering at all manner of festive themed networking events at this time of year.

Hopefully your workplace is putting on some kind of Christmas party this year after the tumultuous time we had last year, and now the hospitality industry is so well versed in keeping ve...

In this episode, we discuss LinkedIn’s latest offering - an in-built freelance services marketplace - an additional function within your LinkedIn profile for adding ‘open to work’ banners to your profile picture, as well as the option to add various keywords about your service offering, so people can find you more readily when they need your skills.

It supersedes the ‘ProFinder’ offering they’d trialled a while back and, after a be...

Running our businesses, (and indeed lives), old school - does it still have a place in an ever-more digital society?

With so much focus these days on people, and indeed businesses taking advantage of the latest platforms and technologies, i.e. the TikTok generation (something that completely eludes us, I might add) - there doesn’t seem to be anywhere near as much focus on tried and tested marketing methods that would now be co...

In this episode we talk to Dan Hoff-Rodrigues from CX Squared Talent Solutions based in the Midlands.

Dan’s company focusses on recruitment for the tech industry - but he doesn’t work in the traditional model of recruitment, but favours a ‘Talent As A Service’ model, helping to drive the industry into the 21st century.

You’ll learn about his career path to date bringing him to where he is now, and why he wanted to disrupt...

A raw and unplanned episode filled with some topical updates, including the state of the electric vehicle infrastructure, as well as updates on the Birmingham Clean Air Zone and how that’s going.

Electric Vehicles & Infrastructure:

Midlands Connect calls for urgent action needed to speed up the expansion of EV charging points in the midlands. EV use will increase by more than 3000% by the end of the decade, and currently we’re ...

LinkedIn now has nearly 740million members, & over 55million registered companies.

Microsoft bought Skype in 2011. They then bought LinkedIn in 2016. They’ve had the ability to bring in video technologies to LinkedIn for years now. 

So why the delay? 

At the beginning of 2020 saw the massive rise of Zoom, from a little heard-of video conference app, to global powerhouse, exponentially increasing their u...

When you’re self-employed, a freelancer or solopreneur, it can be difficult to make the time to take time away from your business and go on holiday.

There’s often guilt about not being available to your clients, worries about loss of earnings, pressures of getting someone in to cover for you while you’re away; meaning there are so many people that don’t take annual holidays at all.

This can be extremely damaging to your physic...

In this episode, we reflect on the fact we have just hosted our first in-person networking event in over 17 months!

It was a strange feeling being back in our spiritual home of networking - but quickly the strangeness subsided into a feeling of (relative) normality, and absolute familiarity.

We had a (capped) roomful of people eager to get back to business networking, with great, deeper conversations happening throughout. It really...

In this episode, Richard and Iwan give a run down of some of their top productivity tools that they simply can’t live without.

(What they did before then, who knows…)

We cover various business tools, apps, software and platforms that simply make life easier in 2021 and beyond - tools that will often save you lots of time and effort, in turn making you a more productive business owner.

There are also mentions in this episode of grea...

A new (to us) technology has been stumbled upon - the digital business card. An NFC-enabled plastic credit card sized business card that can be scanned on the recipient’s phone, loading up a browser page with all your relevant contact details and web links - with a big shiny button front and centre to allow that person to immediately save your details to their phone’s address book.

The technology isn’t necessarily that new - but it...